January, 2007 Issue

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates chose the historic setting of the British Library to launch Vista, his company's latest incarnation of Windows.

Microsoft execs take the stage in glitzy New York launch, say Vista ushers in the next generation of technology.

CEO accentuates the positives about new Microsoft operating system at today's launch event.

Intel, armed with a custom-designed motherboard, has reclaimed Google as a server customer after a year watching the search powerhouse give its business to AMD.

Microsoft is continuing to lose market share in the search business to industry rival Google, something the software maker's financial chief said on Thursday he is "not happy" about.

It used to be a joke around the Internet that if you Googled "miserable failure," the number-one result provided by the famed search engine was President George W. Bush's official biography on the White House's Web site. This was thanks to a "Google bomb" in which mischievous Web users would manipulate the page ranking of a search result by planting links on their Web sites that used the search terms to point to their result page of choice. But now Google has put out an announcement that states it will be "minimizing the impact" of Google bombs with a new algorithm designed to weed them out.

A US court has thrown out a $4.1bn lawsuit that was levelled against Skype.

Google is expanding the pool of companies that will showcase video ads on its AdSense publisher network to include The Wall Street Journal, two Conde Nast Web sites and Life/Style Television, a Google spokesman confirmed on Wednesday.

Internet security experts are gathering at a secretive conference later this week to form strategies in their fight against cybercriminals.

Microsoft is expected to announce a drop in quarterly earnings next week, largely because it is deferring $1.5 billion in revenue related to delays of its Vista and Office products, analysts say.

Swedish bank Nordea has told ZDNet UK that it has been stung for between seven and eight million Swedish krona — up to £580,000 — in what security company McAfee is describing as the "biggest ever" online bank heist.

European Union investigators have recommended that competition commissioner Neelie Kroes formally charge Intel with thwarting competition in the chip market, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Some MacBook Pro and MacBook customers have the faster 802.11n Wi-Fi chip already sitting in their systems, but it will cost $2 to light it up.

Pipex Wireless, the joint venture between Intel and ISP Pipex, is to set up its second deployment of WiMax in the UK.

A California man faces up to 101 years in federal prison after a jury found him guilty of sending out email scams as well as related crimes.

Computer code that exploits a security vulnerability in Windows has been published on the internet, making it more urgent for users of the operating system to patch.

Google has patched a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in one of its web-hosting services.

Microsoft has poached IBM's chief architect as part of a recruitment drive to bring more web expertise into the company.

Some Web site operators are complaining that Google is flagging their sites as containing malicious software when they believe their sites are harmless.

The internet should continue to be overseen by major agencies including ICANN and the ITU, rather than any new "superstructure", the new head of the International Telecommunications Union said on Friday.

AOL said Friday that it will be dropping Music Now in favor of Napster, which will power the company's subscription music service. The two companies said they will work together to migrate AOL Music Now's 350,000 subscribers.

Businesses looking to set up a private communications network should find the process easier from next year, when the licensing process will be significantly restructured.

The terror alert email service being offered by the British secret service is not secure, according to a Spy Blog, a libertarian organisation that monitors security and surveillance developments.

Like all UK telecoms operators, Thus has been through several challenging years. Bandwidth pricing has plunged thanks to the excess capacity left after the dot-com boom collapsed, and the growing dominance of IP is threatening to destroy traditional revenue streams.

Sales of Windows Vista to businesses were stronger than expected during the operating system's debut month, according to a report from NPD Group.

Don't expect a version of Skype for cellular phones anytime soon. A company executive told Reuters Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that data plans are still too costly to make such a version viable.

Adobe Systems has issued updates to fix security flaws in its Reader and Acrobat software that could allow an attacker to remotely commandeer a computer.

Supercomputing specialist SGI has become Microsoft's latest partner, signing up to support a version of Windows that can farm out computing jobs to a cluster of lower-end servers.

It would be news if IBM didn't get the most U.S. patents in 2006.

Bug hunters of the world, VeriSign's iDefense has an updated bug bounty challenge for you.

Geo-location devices debuting at CES 2007 pack more options into smaller boxes.

The mobile versions of Google Search, Google Maps and Gmail will come bundled on some Samsung phones, both companies announced on Monday at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES), under way this week in Las Vegas.

Microsoft has signed an agreement with GlobeXplorer, an aerial and satellite imagery provider, that will provide new images to Live Search Maps. GlobeXplorer's images will be integrated into Virtual Earth within the next few months.

Nokia has updated its popular internet tablet PC with a range of improvements, including the ability to make Skype calls.

Small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK will up their IT budgets by 10.7 percent in 2007, more than twice the rate seen in France and Germany, according to AMR Research.

Everyone from Apple Computer to Microsoft is promising products this year that will stream photos, movies, and music from PCs to TVs and other screens around the house. How is all that content going to make it from your living room to other devices around the house?

The city of San Francisco and EarthLink have finalized a contract that will enable EarthLink to build a citywide wireless network and Google to provide free Internet access.

Partnership marks another move by Google to influence a market where rivals still lead.

Adobe encourages upgrading to Reader 8 and recommends disabling Acrobat and Reader plug-ins on Web browsers until patches are issued.

A recently discovered security weakness in the widely used Acrobat Reader software could put Net users at more risk than previously thought, experts warned Thursday.

As part of its monthly patch cycle, Microsoft plans to release on Tuesday eight security bulletins to plug holes in its software products.

Open-source database company MySQL has decided to stick to the current General Public License rather than move to an upcoming revision, pending broader industry acceptance.

More network connections and internet services have been restored as businesses return to work after the year-end and new-year holidays.

Cisco Systems said Thursday it will pay $830 million in cash and stock for e-mail security company IronPort Systems.

The Home Office is planning to give inmates email access so they can keep in contact with their families.

A UK company has announced it will build a factory to produce flexible display technology components for use in commercially available e-paper products.

Google might have purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion last year, but that certainly hasn't marked the end of the Mountain View, Calif. company's forays into online video. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Google would be investing in Shenzhen Xunlei Network Technology, a video download service based in China. Google operates its own Chinese search engine, and unlike its American counterpart, it's an underdog: the Beijing-based Baidu holds the largest share of the Chinese search market. Both Google China and Baidu had been looking to expand into online video services over the past month, and Google's investment in Xunlei solidifies that commitment. China, after all, may be on the fast track to surpassing the U.S. as the nation with the most Internet users, according to recent data.

Security vendors have warned that the "Happy New Year" worm could catch employees returning from New Year's celebrations unawares, but believe the threat posed by the malware will soon pass.

Britain's online spending in the run up to Christmas has exceeded expectations, according to the global e-retailing body, Interactive Media in Retail Group.